Fruits and vegetables feature shapes that highlight the culinary use of the product. For example, globe tomatoes are large and round, and are often used for slicing on sandwiches and burgers. Salad tomatoes tend to be small and oval shaped and eaten as snacks. Carrots and beets come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, some of which are used for canning and juicing, some for the consumer market, and others for the food service market. The proper produce shape and size is also critical for growers and producers in order to efficiently harvest and process the products into soups and sauces. In many cases, the shape of the product determines its market class and is therefore closely connected to the price farmers obtain for the product. The continued improvement of crops for better yield and higher quality relies extensively on recreating the same shape of the produce. Off types and varieties that produce shapes that are not commensurate with the market class will not likely yield a commercially successful product, no matter how high it yields. Understanding the molecular aspects of shape and the application of this knowledge to other crops, will enable breeders to select for the desired morphology early in the breeding cycle. This knowledge would save time and efforts in other crops and thus would benefit societies across the world. Moreover, phone apps will be developed in collaboration with undergraduate computer science students to enable growers and breeders to evaluate produce quickly and accurately.
The recently discovered OFP-TRM-SUN regulon has emerged as an important paradigm in the variation in shape of produce ranging from fruits to grains. Proteins from these families are associated with microtubules that are thought to affect cell division leading to altered organ shapes. Still, much remains to be learned about this regulon and whether it extends to root crops. OFP, TRM, and SUN are members of multigene families, yet the role of most members in organ morphology is not well understood. To address these questions, the project plans to map modifiers of tomato sun and ovate in tomato; extend the regulon to carrot and table beet, and investigate the role of SUN in watermelon; discover the function of other members of the OFP, TRM, SUN family; and testing cell growth and geometry parameters by OFP-TRM-SUN. Combined, this information would lead to detailed mechanistic and fundamental insights into the regulation of organogenesis in plants and this knowledge will provide ample opportunities for crop improvement.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
